March is a Ph.D. candidate in English at New York University. In the following essay, he examines ways in which the past reimposes itself on the young couple in "Snapshots of a Wedding," particularly with regard to Neo's future role as a wife.

As its title indicates, Bessie Head's "Snapshots of a Wedding" (1977) is the story of a wedding, in this case that between Neo and Kegoletile, two young people from an African village. But it is not the wedding event itself that is of primary interest in the story. Rather, this is a story not simply of a wedding, but of what this particular wedding represents. The wedding is, at the same time, the site of a breach with the past and a confirmation of the precarious position of women within the tradition of that very past with which Kegoletile and his new wife, Neo...